Notre Dame's Te'o, Alabama's Jones a couple of 'family' guys

Irish, Tide ride their spirit, talent, leadership to BCS title game, but football not nearly an end-all to the standouts

January 05, 2013|By Brian Hamilton, Chicago Tribune reporter

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Barrett Jones graduated with a perfect 4.0 grade-point average, but the equation involving the protective boot, crutches and bag that had to be removed from the airplane was a bit beyond him. He mastered three offensive line positions at Alabama, but an injured foot and carry-on luggage made for no easy transition.

At this moment, as Jones struggled toward the jet-way and the first of many awards functions in early December, an unfamiliar voice merrily and mercifully chimed in over his shoulder: Here, let me get this for you.

"I was like, Manti Te'o? Yeah, OK, get my bag, thanks," Jones recalled Saturday. "That just kind of set the tone for how nice of a guy he is. He really understands while this is a big game, it's just a game. Life is about relationships you develop."

If that seems like a stretch to conclude from one pick-me-up, the itinerary that dragged the All-Americans from city to city to city that week reconfirmed the first impression. And it precipitated an odd but revitalizing dynamic in a BCS championship game between two storied programs mad for the sport.

Few things, if anything, are as important to Alabama and Notre Dame as this game and what will transpire Monday night. But to Te'o and Jones, the players who represent the heartbeat of teams who rode their spirit and talent and leadership here, football is not nearly an end-all.

"Barrett loves his family, he respects his parents," Te'o said. "He's a family man. He's very, very smart. He loves his team, he takes a lot of pride in coming from Alabama. He's motivated. He's very, very motivated and he's very driven. He's kind of like me."

One is a 6-foot-5, 302-pound line-of-scrimmage chameleon from Germantown, Tenn. One is a 6-2, 255-pound daisy cutter of an inside linebacker from Hawaii. Everything in between is common ground.

Both have big families: Te'o with five siblings, Jones with 244-pound brother Harrison and 234-pound brother Walker. During the course of that awards week, Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly met the Jones clan and immediately sensed the same energy the Te'os emit, a warmth soaked into the fiber of a team this year.

"They embrace an extended family," Kelly said. "They're so similar in terms of the way they embrace the whole team. Manti's family, when they're in town, will have everybody over. They have 30, 40 people over, and the Joneses are the same way. They are integral to Alabama football.

"You can probably make that connection, that both of these kids galvanize their football teams just because (the teams) are embraced by the families."

Their communities expand beyond football complex walls. Te'o knows the names of countless staffers on campus who might remain anonymous to any other player. Alabama guard Chance Warmack kids Jones that he would strike up a conversation with a rock.

Jones boasts that spotless grade-point average and two spring-break trips in which he decided on unconventional warm-weather locales: Mission trips to Haiti and Nicaragua, where he distributed food, worked at schools and orphanages and helped with construction projects.

He has served as a volunteer tutor at an elementary school and acted as a student mentor at Alabama. And after a tornado decimated Tuscaloosa in April 2011, there was Jones, trading linemen's gloves for work gloves and raking debris from great swaths of dirt.

"I just think you have to remember why you came here," Jones said. "All this stuff is going to pass. When I'm old, people will have no clue who I am. What's going to be left is how you treated people and things like that, things you really invested in the relationships you develop with people. That's what you have to remember.

"While I'm in a position where people know who I am and all that stuff, I want to use that to be a positive role model and to influence other people's lives."

Te'o is the Eagle Scout with the 3.3 grade-point average. He is the volunteer at homeless centers and hospitals who reads to children in the hematology/oncology unit. He famously, and with barely any provocation, wrote a letter to the parents of a girl dying of cancer shortly after losing his girlfriend to leukemia.

He became arguably one of the most important players in the history of Notre Dame football while balancing a rigorous dedication to the sport with an unflagging recognition of the magnitude of everything else around it.

"There's always other important things," Te'o said. "I've always said football is a game that obviously we all love, but life goes on. Life is just a whole other ballgame. When you start to realize that — football is great, but it's not everything. It puts football in its proper place."

So Te'o picked up a bag for Jones and everything picked up from there. They talked freely and easily that December week during dinners surrounded by family. They knew in a month, they'd collide, sometimes literally and violently, for a place in history. They knew that didn't matter at the time.

"You meet him, he's just a joy to be around," Jones said of Te'o. "I figured he'd be somewhat nice or at least cordial, but I didn't know he would be that nice."

Said Te'o of Jones: "He's just a real good guy."

Around 200 players will populate the sidelines at Sun Life Stadium on Monday. It's a bit much to say that the broader perspective of two, Manti Te'o and Barrett Jones, profoundly altered the outlooks of all. It's clear that a pair of college football goliaths appreciate the view.

"Everything that we strive to be is kind of through him," Notre Dame guard Chris Watt said of Te'o.

Or, as Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron put it regarding his friend Jones: "It's never a bad thing when you have a guy like that around you."